President's Message

Leo Buhler

Professor of Surgery, Division of Visceral Surgery,Geneva University Hospital, Switzerland

Welcome to the International Xenotransplantation Association

Dear IXA Members, dear colleagues,

On behalf of our Association, I would like to wish you an excellent start in the new year that will be intense with numerous events for our society.

The speed of progress in our field has sharply accelerated over the last few years and the prospect of clinical application is becoming more precise. During the year 2018, we have met in Madrid during the TTS congress and delegates of various continents also came together last December in Changsha under the umbrella of the World Health Organization to discuss the essential principles and recommendations for the planning of future clinical trials. You will find a summary of the meeting held in Changsha in this newsletter.

2019 will also be a relevant year for our Association, as several important meetings will be held. First, in March, a symposium organized by the University of Alabama at Birmingham will focus on the organizational steps necessary to plan clinical trials for xenotransplantation.

In October, we should all come together for the official congress of our Association that will take place in Munich, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. The organizers of the congress have prepared an outstanding program with numerous key speakers who will update us on the recent progress and also give us the vision of the future collaborations with other fields, such as the new genetic engineering tools or blastocyst complementation.

Studies performed in our field have recently again been published in top scientific journals, allowing renewed international impact and interest. Thanks to this drive, our official journal Xenotransplantation has reached an excellent status with a strong impact factor and I invite all members to consider publication of their work in our journal. The Xenoprize 2018 for the best paper published in Xenotransplantation last year will be announced during the meeting in Munich.

The IXA council is happy to report that it has voted unanimously to obtain official legal status in the U.S. by filing for Incorporation at the beginning of 2019 and will follow with registration for charitable status.

Finally, I thank all the members of the council for their excellent work and collaboration and look forward to meeting you during one of the coming events during this year, that will be the year of the pig according to the Chinese calendar!

With my best wishes,

Leo Buhler
IXA President

A HEARTFELT THANK YOU TO ALL PARTICIPANTS

Dear participants of the IXA2019 Congress,

It was our great pleasure to host the main event of the International Xenotransplantation Association in Munich and we hope that you all enjoyed it as much as we did. We would like to thank all speakers and presenters from academia, industry and the regulatory authorities, who impressively documented the momentum that xenotransplantation research has taken up over the last years. It was particularly encouraging to see how many young researchers adopted xenotransplantation as their research topic, all pulling together to move xenotransplantation of cells, tissues and organs to clinical application. Thus, our Society is facing very exciting times, probably the most exciting ever.

Very best wishes and see you at the IXA/IPITA/CTRMS Congress 2021 in San Diego!